Gandhi or Bishop Tutu or the Dalai Lama. I think they're really embodiments of what we aspire to and, by keeping them in our heads, we're reminding ourselves of who we could be. That's what we're hoping to climb up towards.

I began thinking about why am I constructing almost a shadow father or ghost father in my head into Graham Greene in response to the father who created me? What's going on here? I think a part of my sense is it's every boy's story. When we are kids, we imagine that to define ourselves or to find ourselves means charting your own individuality, making your own destiny and actually running away from your parents and your home and what you grew up with.

Living here in California, I think one of the scariest things about California is the fact that it is rewriting its script and changing constantly and so many people don't know who they will be and who they will be with a year from now.

Serendipity was my tour guide, assisted by caprice

Travel is an act of humility

I think Dalai Lama is always careful about stressing that people be led into the practice by somebody who knows what's going on.

The average American teenager sends or receives 75 text messages a day, though one girl in Sacramento managed to handle an average of 10,000 every 24 hours for a month.